Creating an Original Character
Let's not sugarcoat it: writing stories is hard. Anyone can do it, and with enough practice you can master it like any other endeavor. A new writer wanting to key up some stories about his favorite Persona-user is an extremely great thing, but hastiness is ever-lurking in all eager shadows. The character is the pivot. This is fanfiction, characters are the reason anyone cares, after all. So it's your job as a writer to make readers care about your character, and it's your duty to do the world justice. The latter is relatively easy--you like the world, so of course you'd want it to be done justice. The former? Well, take a seat. If you don't know by now, something called a "Mary Sue" plagues fanfiction. The label has come under fire from authors to whom's characters the label has been liberally applied, but nonetheless is a legitimate concern to watch out for. I'll be walking you through a good process to crafting a character. This is by no means the only way, but for new writers? Just keep reading, dude. =1: The Name.= Unless you get contracted by Atlus to become a scriptwriter, the only way people will know your character is through their name. It's important to pick a good one, memorable, unique, and functional. For a lot of people making up character names is easy: Dwight Thompson. Took eight seconds to come up with that. Of course, unless your character is a transfer student (more on that later) their name will be Japanese. Here's where native English speakers can get goofy. Misaku Onjida. If you're confused, don't be, if you laughed, stop it. Names much worse than that absolutely plague English fanfiction. This isn't something that can really be taught, it's just something that's understood: don't make your name outlandish. Ask a few people online, whether at devoted Persona communities or fanfiction circles, for feedback on your name. It's hard, but taking criticism is essential. Filtering out flames and negative comments is a good skill to have, but absolutely shutting out everything that is not butt-kissing hurts you as a writer. It's not easy, but in the long run you will benefit from it. Getting back to the name, you revise it and come up with Shohei Hidano. Let's run with that, it's unique, sounds good, and easy to remember. All the characteristics of a good name. Now what's being asked is: Who is Shohei Hidano? Well, deciding that will also take some though. Read on, knowledge seeker. =2: Stereotypes.= If you've watched any kind of anime for any (un)reasonable period of time, then you should be very familiar with stereotypes. There's dozens to choose from initiallly--the idiot hero, serious, quiet guy, the cool disaffected loner, the bubbly perky dude, the jovial big brother figure--are all easily recognized and even celebrated foundations on which to build your character. Shohei could be any one of them. Notice I said "build" and not "lift wholesale for". See, for new writers, creating characters can be particularly daunting and they don't even realize it. Loading your characters up on stereotypes inevitably makes them a cliche. Sure you've got recognizability for Shohei--in exchange for making him totally forgettable as a character. His parents died when he was young--so did a million other fan characters'. He has a tough time making friends--very natural, but also very bland, he'll have many people around him by story's end, and your reader knows it. So what do you do? Give him depth, of course! It may appear difficult, but with practice, like anything, you'll be good at it. If Shohei's parents died when he was young, twist reader expectations and make him totally lax about it. He was half a year old when it happened, as far as he's concerned his adoptive parents are his real parents. He has trouble making friends? Then show him being edgy and weird in the story and not start opening up until he has to break out of his shell or risk getting someone killed. What's been gotten at here is character flaws and roundness. If you like Persona, you'll know that they've all got moments where they're your favorite character or you can't believe they exist. Maki, Eikichi, Junpei, Rise, and every character had obstacles that they couldn't overcome as the current them. Only by growing as a person could the surmount their personable obstacles and endear themselves to us. No one likes seeing characters, male or female, god mode themselves through the story. So now we've got a good name and practically a real person to go with it. You're ready to move on to Shohei's friends and fellow Persona-users! =3: Cast Calculus.= Remember those stereotypes I talked about earlier? 'Bout five of them? Let's say you decided to make Shohei the cool, disaffected loner. He keeps to himself, and has no friends because of it, and it really bothers him. Sounds good, we can make him progress as the story gets rolling. But what about his friends? Well look no further! Since you're now free of an insane urge to stuff words full of stereotypes, let's turn our attention to cast calculus, as TVtropes likes to call it. Just like you can't have everyone in a Persona game be a brash fighter who only knows Strike skills and Agi spells, you can't throw eight super cool loners who have tragic pasts but are still awesomely take-nothing-from-nobody into your story. That's boring. Variety is the spice of life and the Kobe beef of fanfiction. Number of characters is a huge concern. In the first story I ever wrote, there were eight. This was far too many for a newbie young writer to handle, it's just unwieldy. Five, or my favorite, six characters are perfect numbers to start off with. Since we have four other unfilled stereotypes left, let's flesh those right out into Shohei's friends. Serious-and-quiet, and bubbly-perky have just become Haruo Kinoshita and Keiji "Takes" Takehama. You, the ever vigilant writer, are now thinking in terms of what characters bring to the table. How does lonely, friendless Shohei benefit? Well, Haruo can be the super academic straight man on the group. He's always vying for class president but his cold, mechanical personality leaves people turned off. Keiji Takehama prefers being called Takes and is an aspiring auteur in a field he only ever hints at mysteriously, others call him weird and self-absorbed behind his back. You can't have only guys, can you? 'Course not! We can take the idiot hero and jovial older brother and flip them into girls. Meet Ran Emiji and Masayo Hokujo. Ran is a chronic daydreamer who goes Leeroy Jenkins with her Persona powers constantly, not realizing that it's not a game. Masayo is levelheaded and takes the brunt of the team's emotions on her shoulders, as a result it just heaps on to the mountains of nerve-wracking pressure she's under as a third-year. These sound like a group of real people with real problems thrown into a world in which they'd have to adapt to, correct? Excellent! Then we've achieved our original goals of creating good characters. Getting them to mesh together is entirely up to you, dear reader. =4: Don't do it man.= Before I take my leave, I feel the need to heap a few final responsibilities on to your shoulders. See, I actually broke one of the basic rules of writing in the very last section: Introduce characters gradually. Here's a test: without looking back, give me the complete names and personalities of all five characters we just created. I'll wait. You probably were only able to remember everything about Shohei, right? Maybe one or two other names, but the most about Shohei, correct? Well that's no accident--we've been talking about the guy all page. You were bombarded with everything about four completely new characters you've got no emotional investment in only a minute or two ago. That's the benefit of gradual introduction, it's why you never, ever start off with a full party in SMT games. Let your reader get acquainted to a small group of current characters before tossing a new one into the mix. Be able to write. There's no dancing around it, there are no tricks to the trade, this one takes good ol' fashioned paying attention to them fancy book learnin's. Like it's been said: with practice, you will become a deity of the keyboard. At least know how to capitalize properly, and keep the one in the revolver in case of preventative Russian Roulette for every time you confuse "should have" with "should of" or "they're" and "their." Also, plan out what's going to happen, at least somewhat. Knowing how your story's going to end, and working towards that, or having all the major plot beats written or typed out somewhere to reference helps hugely when you hit a block and don't really know how to proceed. For some, it may take the fun out of it, but inspiration will strike you like a bolt out the blue at some point--jot it down. Like your own story. This is the biggest annoyance people find on fanfiction sites. People who are obviously writing just to have their egos stroked ("No flames please.") or to get their egos stroked slightly more. If you aren't riveted by your own tale or anxious to figure out and write down what happens next, then maybe you should save your characters for a tale you're more invested in. Lastly, and most importantly: BE ABLE TO TAKE CRITICISM. Category:] Category:Help